EN: Where millions of tons of plastic kill ocean life and poison food chains, Boyan sees opportunities to combat this. While researching ocean plastics during school holidays, he performed analysis on various fundamental topics (including particle sizes, plastic/plankton separation and the amount of plastic in the oceans), leading up to the first realistic concept for cleaning up the world’s oceans…

Highly radioactive water detected closer to the ocean at Fukushima

Tepco, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, announced Saturday it had measured a level of 3,000 becquerels / liter for radioactive elements producing beta rays (such as strontium-90) accumulated at the foot of ground water reactors. This level is ten times higher than the permissible dose limit for seawater, and more than twice that observed in the previous sample.

Higher radioactivity near the ocean

However, the liquid tested this time was extracted from a new sampling point, closer to the ocean than where the water had been collected for the previous review. Tepco had indicated that water had accumulated and had not approached the ocean. Tighter controls shows that this is probably not the case.

Tepco is not as affirmative

Tepco said not being able to explain why the radioactivity of groundwater near the Pacific is higher, but stressed that “the seawater analyzed, it does not show increased levels of radioactivity “. However, the company, which promises to strength controls, says “can not currently determine whether radioactive water is flowing or not in the nearby ocean.”